She Is My Best Friend
by Sarabibliomania
Summary: But it was more than that. More than friends. More than siblings or boyfriend or girlfriend. We are soul mates.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: This is just a short piece I have based off of a fanfiction I have planned for Drake & Josh. It's not done yet but I thought I'd post it anyway, see if I got a good response and if I did finish it.

P.S This is a character I created myself. I only own her.

She is my best friend.

Every since we were five and she hit a boy twice her size for calling me a dork. Her mother was called and I sat outside the classroom, swinging my legs under the bench until she came out and fumbled over my words until I managed to piece together a thank you. She grinned back and said simply that she liked me and declared that we were now friends.

Just like that.

It was strange at first, having a friend someone to sit with and talk to and who thought your jokes were funny even when they weren't. But then it became natural. Like another layer of skin.

She was my best friend. And I was hers.

People were confused by our friendship. The fact that we followed each other everywhere, that we cuddled and held hands and once or twice shared a bath while re-enacting battles between our toys with bubble beards that stuck to our chests like bubble wrap.

Nothing ever happened. We were just friends.

But it was more than that. More than friends. More than siblings or boyfriend or girlfriend. We were soul mates.

And we still are.

She is perfect. Just looking at her sometimes I wanted to cry because she was so beautiful and so wonderful that it never made sense to me that of all people she wanted to be my friend.

But she was. Against all odds she wanted to be my friend.

People didn't understand her really. They way she talked or smiled or how she always dressed in clothes her mom made herself or bounced up and down on the balls of her feet like she had too much energy to contain. She always talked too fast, rambled off course of the conversation until something distracted her and she walked off to find what it was. She didn't understand half of what was going on at the time, getting confused over the situation and looking at me with pleading eyes to explain to her what was going on.

People thought she was dumb. Thought that she was annoying. That she had special needs or just plain stupid.

She was Bipolar.

She was diagnosed early and I was there holding her hand as the doctor ran through the list of medical terms and explanations while she looked up at her with tears in her eyes before turning to me to explain what was going on.

I never hated anyone as much as I did the doctor in that moment.

Her dad left soon after the diagnosis. Said that he couldn't handle the stress and the pressure, yelling at her mother while she sat at the top of the stairs and quietly listened to every word.

She started cutting the next day.

She told me about the scars as soon as she made them, cutting over her legs and her stomach so no one could see and I kissed each one before burying my face in her lap and holding her until she stopped trembling.

She cut for another two years before she finally stopped.

She started to take medication for it, rolling the pills over between her fingers before swallowing each one with a gag and staring at the labels on the bottles as if they somehow reinforced her belief that there was something wrong with her.

There never was. Never to me. She was perfect.

She balanced back and forth between the depression and the manic, lost in bliss and thought and distraction for weeks at a time before falling between the cracks and curling up in my bed while I ran my fingers through her hair and pressed the occasional kiss to her cheek.

She said she felt safe in my bed. Safe with me.

It was one of the reasons why we stayed so close to one another. Away from the "cool" kids and the words they would call us in hopes that it would make one or both of us break down in some sort of humiliation that they got off on. We could tell each other everything, be anything with each other and know at the end of the day we could curl up in bed together with the knowledge that we were together. That we were safe.

But then everything changed.

The moment she met Drake I knew she was infatuated. Most girls were. The moment they saw the flip of his hair or his hold on his guitar and they were gone and lost beyond any reason or thought that it might be a bad idea. I thought she might she might be different, see beneath and beyond his charm and his skilled fingers on his guitar strings.

She was. But she wasn't.

They started dating and I could see beneath the confidence that he exuded that she made him weak. That he would stumble on his words when he talked to her or blush after she kissed him and watch her movements as she left the room.

He was just as infatuated with her as she was with him. Maybe more.

I could stand it at first. The idea that she no longer belonged wholly to me. The thought that someone else now belonged and shared in her heart. That it just wasn't me holding it safe in her hands but that it had been torn between us with him balancing it between his fingers with less care or consideration that I could never dare attempt.

But then I couldn't bear it any more. And I broke.

She didn't belong with him. Not after mere months of knowing him when I had loved and was consumed by her for years. Knowing her inside and out. The marks on her skin, the scars on her heart and the lie she so heartedly believed that there was something wrong with her. That she was somehow broken and thus unfixable.

I was jealous.

She wasn't his. She was mine. I was hers. We were two halves to make a whole that needed the other to stand, to smile and be strong against a world that was so determined to break us down whenever we needed it.

He could never understand that.

To some degree he did. Beneath it all he understood that I was irreplaceable to her. That I could never be put aside or faded out of the picture to make way for him. I was first and foremost. And he would always be second place.

In a world that mattered so little I would always be last and in her heart where it mattered so much I was always first.

He tried to make her choose. To make her choose between us like were two dinner options and be satisfied with only one for the rest of her life. But she couldn't and she didn't.

So he broke up with her.

I barely saw her for a week with only bare moments of seeing her at school before I finally went to her door with cupcakes reading out "I love you B" because I couldn't afford the extra cupcake to fully spell out her name. We curled up in her bed for the rest of the night, licking the icing off the wrappers.

Just like old times.

But it wasn't. Not really. Drake seemed to move on easily, a different girl every week and a different number on his tongue to remember them by. It broke her heart every time she saw them, every way he tried to show her that he had moved on and didn't need her anymore.

But even I could see it was a lie.

He missed her. He loved her. But he didn't know how. So he kept up the stream of girls paraded past her while she tried her best not to shrink back at the sight. 


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: This is a scene that I had planned for season 4 that gives some background and information to the characters and relationships if I ever get around to writing it. It gets a little rated M here so beware of that and hopefully I can get back to you soon with another chapter.

It was one of those moments that lasted forever.

When the world kind of froze, stuck in its place and you could feel and sense everything like ripples under your skin that collided in your bones and made your blood bubble. When I noticed and felt every detail about her and felt it all climb in under my skin and bury itself there like a second layer that was more comfortable then the first.

Like I could shed it entirely and no longer exist as my own and only belong as hers.

I leaned in carefully so I wouldn't startle her and pressed my lips against hers, catching her bottom one between my own and tasting them like they were iced sugar. She responded quicker then I feared and I felt her press back against me, her fingers entwined into the back of my head and lacing themselves through the sparse strands of black hair and holding me against her.

Holding us together and steady. The only place where I stood in quicksand and at the same time solid ground.

My heart rate began to beat faster and I could feel sweat start to dot the back of my neck as I parted my lips and kissed her deeper before pulling away and struggling to undo and take off my shirt. My fingers were trembling and slick with sweat and it got caught around my middle as she slid her hands up my stomach and collapsed the fabric over my chest and neck before yanking it off from around my head and making my hair stick up on end.

In another moment I could imagine us laughing at it but this was an entirely different moment.

She ran her fingers over my arms and chest, her fingernails skimming over my skin and goose bumps sensitive under her touch. This wasn't the first time we touched. It was impossible to avoid after you had been as close as we had been as long as we had. But we had never touched like this. Never this hesitant. Like standing on the edge of a crumbled cliff and knowing the wrong step could send you crashing over.

But not really caring because it was her touch that sent me over.

I leaned back in against her and entangled my fingers in her blonde hair and cradled it to her neck as she pressed her fingers along my neck and sliding at the base where I could feel the dampness of my sweat. I sweated too much. When I was nervous. When I was terrified.

When I was kissing my best friend in the whole world and knowing that she was kissing me back.

I reached for her hips and started to tug off the layers of her shirt that flared at the top of her jeans. She helped me move along the multi coloured folds and catching it up over her head and making her hair fall in disarray over her face. I swept it back from her face as I kissed her again, short pecks on the lips before I gently pushed her back onto the bed, the mattress sagging under our weight and the decorative sheets and quilts sliding beneath my legs.

I loved her. Every inch. Every move. Every word. Every breath. Every heart beat. Every blink. I was in love with her.

It was different nothing. Something was changed. There was an urgency to it. Like every second since we had met at age five and she punched a kid for calling me a dork had been waiting for this moment and urging me on in pathetic desperation. Her lips were now sucking and biting at mine and we were panting between each break of kiss. I was aware of every pulse of blood and how it made my body feel over heated like I was about to combust and explode. I could feel myself between her legs. Feel her breasts against my bare chest and the awareness that her bra was cut in a way that her nipples scratched against me.

That I could feel her heart beat on mine and that it was beating just as fast.

I barely pulled my lips away and ran my tongue along her neck and she gasped, turning her head to give me more expanse of skin and I nipped and sucked at the indentations of her neck and the line of her collar bone. She was panting into the pillow, fingers tangled in the fabric and I could feel the layers of my skin shifting and grating one another like they could wear themselves thin and make me dissolve.

Dissolve into her skin and get lost within her so that I never had to live a second that wasn't her.

She her lips back suddenly and they were on mine again, startling me and digging her fingers into my hair and bringing her hips against mine in a violent jerk. I gasped and broke free for a moment, unable to think for a moment as my blood got hotter and I could feel myself shaking like I was a lit wire about to let loose and burn.

Burn and dissolve. Sink into her skin and get lost. No longer me but her. Always her.

Her teeth grazed and pulled at my ear and I lost my grip on the sheet and collapsed against her, sinking my teeth into her shoulder and her breath caught in her throat and I could hear it get lost in her chest and I followed the sound of it down her chest, kissing at her skin and biting gently enough to leave marks.

I wanted to remember this. To know that this was not a dream. That it was real and it was happening and it wasn't all in my head.

I ran my fingers across the edges of her breast, the stitched fake feathers of her bra fluttering under my touch and barely revealing her nipple dark against the paleness of her skin. I had seen her naked before. Hundreds of times as she had seen me. Changing in front of the other, sharing baths when we were little, sleeping in the same bed together naked when it was too hot for clothes. When we got older and we got curious or had questions about the others body and not knowing a limit of seeing your best friend naked that others might think of.

But this was different.

I gently sucked on her nipple, feeling it harden and her stomach contract underneath me as she whimpered. I bit at it gently, rolling it under my teeth and grazing the edges of it with my tongue. Her back arched into the mattress as I blew on it gently and I watched goose bumps raise themselves on her skin, fragile under the faded light of her lamp. I rested my chin on her stomach and made eye contact with her, her blue eyes glazed somewhat and shattered under the shadow of her eyelashes.

The world went slow again.

They were the same eyes I made first real eye contact with when she declared that we were friends and like that we were. The same eyes that avoided mine in shame and terror as she showed me the scars over her legs and lower stomach and I buried my face into her thighs and held her until she stopped trembling. The same eyes that told me she was in love with Drake when I bit my tongue so hard I tasted blood and didn't know why I could bear the salty taste like it was nothing in comparison to another hurt. The same eyes that told me that Drake had broken up with her and for every moment after that watched him with other girls like he didn't care what it did to her.

The eyes that right now told me that she loved me. That she was buried under my skin and I was broken under hers.

The world broke apart when I noticed it and my lips were hard to hers again, biting and sucking and panting while her fingers clawed and dug into my back that when arched could give off the illusion of muscle and tone. I didn't care. I could remember the marks. I could feel them and know this was not a dream.

That this was real.

I grasped at the back of her headboard as she moved further up against it, her knee sliding between my legs and making me bite on her lips almost enough to draw blood. I licked away the threat and pressed against her again, my fingers tangled in the intricate frame of her bed and gasping as the heat built again under my skin and dragged itself down me like I was drowning in it.

Drowning in her.

I kissed her neck again, sliding my lips down and running my tongue over her collar and gripping her hips to hold them still as I buried my face into her stomach. Tasting the sweat dotted her abs and running my tongue to the clasp of her bra before burying my face again into her skin. I could feel her pulse underneath it as I panted, everything too hot and dizzying.

Like I had actually lost myself under her skin and was forgotten inside her.

I undid the buttons of her jeans and pulled down the zipper, the sound of it too loud in my ears and I edged down the fabric over her hip bones to reveal the lace trim of her underwear. I brought myself back up to her lips in one sudden move and kissed her desperately, every part of me feeling like it was wounded and I was left weak and trembling because of it. She clutched at my hair, panting against my tongue and I ran my finger along the lace of her underwear, ghosting her lower stomach and feeling her tremble at my touch.

It was then that I realised what was going to happen next. What all the moments had been leading too.

She had done this before. She had told me about her one night with Drake after they broke up and just after they had almost become comfortable with being around one another again. When she thought that he loved her and he just wanted sex and he lied when he said it because he knew he would always come second where I came first and broke her heart rather than try and make her choose.

Choose between the two of us as if half the world rested on either side of us and would break her under the weight of the choice.

I pecked her lips. Once. Twice. Three times before I pulled back and grabbed at the bedside dresser where I knew she kept a box of condoms. I fumbled for the drawer as she ran her fingers over the fine hairs of my stomach and I managed to grab a hold of one and rip it open with my teeth and unravel it from the brightly coloured packaging.

We had tried to make balloons with them before giving up and buying real balloons.

Her fingers dropped to my waist and started to tug and undo my jeans and I rested on my arms on either side of her head, feeling them tremble as she carefully undid my zipper and reached inside and touched me. I panted violently, my arms threatening to break beneath me and make me collapse on top of her as she ran her fingers delicately over the fabric of my boxers and touching me so my eyes rolled back and I saw white.

But then she stopped.

I caught my breath and stared back down at her as she froze, suddenly looking thoughtful and like she was lost somewhere I couldn't reach her where she went and for a brief moment I was left alone and defenceless without her there to keep me safe and me to return the favor. She blinked once then twice, biting her lip and pulling back her fingers and resting them on the quilt at her side.

And I knew. 


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Sorry for the late update I really wasn't sure where to take on the scene and even as I wrote it it took on a less comical outlook then I expected but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I'm not sure if this is going to be the less chapter or not because the actual story I have is a lot more comical and is from her point of view so I'm not sure if people would like that if I'd be able to get around to it but in any case I hope you enjoy.

I carefully rolled off of her and collapsed into the disarray of quilts that gathered on her bed. They were tie dyed. I could still remember the day we made them and became so covered in blue and purple that we weren't allowed to sit down anywhere and in defiance laid our hands over a pair of plain white shirts for each of us to keep.

It was my favorite.

She rolled over just as I did and folded her arms over her chest which rustled the feathers on her bra and made on loosen and stick to her arm, the delicate lines of it curled around one of her freckles like a softened half moon. I reached over to pick it off and resisted the urge to trail my fingers after it just to feel the goose bumps rising on her skin. 

It was a harsh desire.

She reached her fingers across the pillow for mine and lightly entwined them together, her own so much paler and delicate in comparison to mine with her nails chewed down to the quick for whenever she got nervous or felt the need to cut and picked a lighter poison. She ran the nails back and forth over my palm, tracing over the lines and the bumps, feeling my bones underneath my skin and the way they moved as my whole body gathered together in one action under her touch.

Focused on one point and frozen in that moment.

'We can't' she said it quietly, swallowing hard and her lips catching on the side of her pillow and making it thick. She adjusted her head on it and cleared her throat, fingers still searching mine and slowly circling over a freckle by my wrist that I could feel going numb under her ministrations. I nodded, the movement one I didn't have control over and only going through the motions of what I thought I should do.

'I know.'

She lifted my hand and pressed her lips over the fingers and tasting my knuckles. A shiver crawled over itself under my skin and I bit my lip on the intake, a metallic scent on my tongue that didn't feel bitter but almost sweet at the encouragement. She pulled away and smoothed her thumb over the skin as if it could wipe the memory clean and I would no long feel it or a thousand others sinking through me like tiny slivers cutting their way inside.

'I don't even think we could survive it.'

It. Sex. It hadn't worked for her and Drake. Less than five minutes on our couch and a loss of once fragile friendship and a love that stung on every reminder of it, every reminder I had when I watched her watch him with a longing I couldn't voice and he returned the glance after she looked away with a break that gave age into my stomach. It couldn't work for them. Why would it work for us?

'No. We couldn't.'

I couldn't hear myself properly. Like it was a distant memory or dream I was having trouble remembering but still hurt whenever it was encouraged into half thought. That I was agreeing with her, saying that it was alright when inside I wasn't in control of my body and was only saying the words because some part of me knew she was right and the rest of me was screaming itself bloody that I loved her and I always would and that Drake didn't deserve her and I would never hurt her like he did.

That I wasn't the kind of man capable of breaking a woman's heart in hopes of keeping it safe.

She laughed slightly under her breath and I froze, paralyzed with the sound of it and desperate as always to what encouraged it and whether or not I had anything to do with it. 'You're a good kisser.' She blushed and glanced up at me in embarrassment, her eyes suddenly shy beneath the halo of her hair curled over her shoulders and once badly dyed pink when we were little and thought it was a good idea.

'We've kissed before.'

We had. Hundreds of times. When we were little and didn't know what a kiss was short pecks on the lips then a fit of giggles like we had done something wrong then as we got older longer ones in greeting or thanks or when we poked fun at our exceeding attractiveness and made out in comical effect that we could and felt nothing in doing so. Or as she said and I agreed.

I always agreed.

'I know.' She curled up deeper into the sheets, her nipple dark against her skin visible and my blood growing hot and slowing in my veins so nothing felt like it was working right and just a heartbeat out of focus. 'This was just ... different.' She giggled slightly as if remembering what my heart hadn't yet quite calmed down from and pulled our fingers together into the pillow so they disappeared and reappeared amongst the poorly stitched fabrics that made her pillow case.

'You've become more well endowed.'

She buried her face in the pillow, suddenly shy and peeked out at me, waiting for my response and almost giddy in the anticipation of it. I smiled; feeling myself blush with a selfish sense of pride that she thought so and even if no other girl found out that at least she thought so and my ego might survive on the fact.

'I have been eating my vegetables.'

We both laughed. It felt good and at the same time hurt like a shiver of a knife was being drawn down my arms before turned to sharply and drawing a line of blood on the edges of the goose bumps that hadn't quite died out. A hurt and a pleasure that fell too close on the same side and leaving my head dizzy and stomach sick that I might be able to survive on the hurt alone if she was the one who encouraged it.

That I had become so twisted with her love that I could survive on its opposite as long as she was the one who gave it.

'I like your bra.' I reached out and lightly fingered the strap, the thumb caught underneath it and rubbing gently against her shoulder and along the curve of the blade so when I swallowed it tasted bitter. 'Thanks. I don't think I used the right glue though. I keep shedding feathers. Birds are going to start thinking that I'm one of them.' She pulled a loose feather off of it and flicked it onto the sheet where it faded in with the blue and purple collided together. She once said that I was blue and she was the purple. Then she entwined our stained hands together so we couldn't tell the colours apart and told me that I was a part of her skin.

The skin she later hated being trapped in and tried to tear her way out.

'You'd be a pretty bird.' I half murmured, half thought it but she heard and lifted her eyes to mine, the look to them saddened and the sight twisted into my ribs with a pressure that cracked their way through. 'Prettier than a girl' She lowered her eyes again and ran her fingernail over my palm, tracing her touch like thin white lines over the skin as if she was trying to carve her way inside me where it was safe but didn't want to break me open to do it.

That I would rend and crush myself outwards if she could find a way inside.

She believed it. That she wasn't pretty. Not like the girls Drake dated or the ones who laughed at her because she liked making her own clothes and secretly answered math problems on the back of her notebook because half the time she was scared she'd get the wrong answer and the other half scared she'd have to explain how she got it and couldn't speak fast enough to keep up with her thoughts. That she talked too fast sometimes that even she didn't know what she was saying and then locked herself into the bathroom and tried to claw out her hair as she tried to ignore the pen knife she always kept in her bag that she promised me that she'd never use.

That the world broke at her and she wouldn't let me to do it to myself even if it meant keeping her safe.

'You're the prettiest girl.' I said it over her fingertips with my lips closing over her knuckle and dragging out the kiss to briefly imprint into the delicate folds of skin and hold it there safe. She ran her fingers through my hair and gripped the strands tightly, the curls lost over the fingers of her other hand while my lips remained pressed to her other. Silent and unmoving, the words imprinted on her skin in the form of a kiss where her believe in the opposite was carved in the scars of her legs.

'And you're the prettiest boy.'

I grinned and pulled away to look into her eyes, a tear trembling on her eyelash half formed like it feel in the middle of a thought and now was the only thing that held it together in the believe that she wasn't beautiful and the knowledge that I knew she was. That what she thought and I knew was divided by a breath, a second and a single tear was the only thing to tell the difference.

That her scar could say she was ugly and my kiss would promise she was beautiful.

'I love you Josh.'

I closed my eyes around the sentence, holding it inside my layers of skin and twists of bone and veins and thoughts so it pressed against the heart of me to hold its name and all the others taut in keeping me together. The first moment that I saw her in a blur of a crowd I couldn't yet pick her apart from, when she showed me the scars for the first time with the knife still in her hand and the blood dripping down her legs like the world 'ugly' and 'stupid' carved into them over and over again, the moment I found out she and Drake were together and I knew heartbreak. When she told me they were over and my selfish joy was broken by her misery and the knowledge that I would always choose one to prevent the other. That every moment of joy I had ever been given could be traded in if it meant to spare her one moment of her own pain. Of feeling ugly, of being laughed at for something they cruelly didn't understand, for fingering the scars on her legs as a reminder that skin could be broken and loving someone so much that wasn't me that it pulled her apart every moment that she did.

'I love you too.'

So much.


End file.
